State’s rush to judgment on fracking a bit unsettling

Friday

May 3, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 3, 2013 at 8:57 PM

Like most Americans, I’d like to see our country become energy independent. At the very least, I hope prognosticators inside Exxon-Mobile Corp. are proven correct in their projections that indicate by the middle of the next decade America will become a net-energy exporter.

Mike McHugh

Like most Americans, I’d like to see our country become energy independent. At the very least, I hope prognosticators inside Exxon-Mobile Corp. are proven correct in their projections that indicate by the middle of the next decade America will become a net-energy exporter.

That means we will be selling more oil abroad than we buy for domestic consumption and that the energy we do buy will be purchased from friendly democracies in our hemisphere.

The benefits of producing more domestic energy are enormous both from an economic and political standpoint. By importing less oil we send fewer dollars abroad and thus strengthen our currency while becoming less dependent on foreign sources of oil. Even more importantly, we would no longer have to expend so many American lives and other resources to protect vital U.S. interests in unstable regions of the world.

For more than a decade, the United States and Canada have seen resurgence in energy exploration and extraction — from oil sands in the Alberta region of our neighbor to the north to the oil patches of Texas and Oklahoma once believed to be played out. But what has really catapulted America into one of the world’s leaders of energy production has taken place in North Dakota and parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York thanks, in part, to advance technologies in drilling.

You would have to have been living underground for the past 10 years if the terms “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking” as it is more commonly known is an unfamiliar term. Fracking is the process by which high-powered streams of water combined with sand and heavy compounds are injected into the ground fracturing the subterranean rock formations thus releasing natural gas trapped inside. Energy companies have employed variations of so-called fracking since the mid-1860s with moderate success. It wasn’t until the late 20th Century that this process began to evolve into the method used today.

With the advances made in fracking over the past 16 years, the price of natural gas has tumbled from a high of $8 per million British thermal unit in 2000 to its current price of $4.39 mBtu. Many public utilities have taken notice and have begun switching their energy source from coal to natural gas. Fleet trucking companies and many inner city public transit companies has moved away from diesel engines to those that burn natural gas.

As more users convert to natural gas, the demand for this natural resource will increase and new sources will be needed to satisfy this market.

If the current legislature in Raleigh has its way, fracking will be coming to North Carolina. In Senate Bill 76, a 24-page document titled the Domestic Energy Jobs Act, the framework for hydraulic fracturing in the Tar Heel State is proposed. The bill passed the Senate on Feb. 27 and was sent to the House where it passed March 4, on the first reading and was subsequently referred to the Committee on Commerce and Job Development. If or when it is passed, “Effective March 1, 2015, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Mining and Energy Commission are authorized to issue permits for oil and gas exploration and development activities using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing treatments in the state pursuant to GS 113-395; however, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Mining and Energy Commission are not required to issue such permits until all rules required to be adopted pursuant to Section 2(m) of S.L. 2012-143 have become effective,” according to the bill’s authors.

Geologists believe a reservoir of natural gas lay beneath portions of six counties: Chatham, Durham, Granville, Moore and Wake. And while some land owners are eager to sign over drilling rights to energy companies in the hopes of reaping huge royalties; I say to all: Be careful for what you wish.

Some residents of Pennsylvania who did just that now regret their decision because they have reported well-water contamination and, in some places, methane gas has been known to seep up around well heads. Those of us who live and work in Eastern North Carolina — specifically in and around Camp Lejeune — need no reminder of the damage that toxic compounds seeping into the ground for 40 years can do.

Seventy years ago, we didn’t fully understand the ramifications of disposing harmful compounds into the ground and how they might find their way into wells and aquifers and wells used to supply drinking water to local communities. We do now.

Yet, today the State of North Carolina is very close to allowing energy companies to set up shop in our state and inject chemicals into the ground with the promise that it is safe.

I think every citizen across the state — not just those who reside in the six-targeted counties — need to take the time to understand the pros and cons of fracking before it’s too late.

Swansboro resident Mike McHugh is an advertising account executive with The Daily News. Readers can email him at mike.mchugh@jdnews.com.